seattlepi.com: Health News

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi moved quickly toward a legal confrontation over the nation's most restrictive abortion law Monday.
Within six hours, the governor signed a bill banning most abortions after 15 weeks of gestation, the state's lone abortion clinic sued, and a federal judge set a Tuesday morning hearing to consider blocking the restrictions.
Abortion opponents sought the confrontation, hoping federal courts will ultimately prohibit abortions before a fetus is viable. Current federal law blocks such restrictions by states.
Some legal experts have said a change in the law is unlikely unless the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court changes in a way that favors abortion opponents.
Republican Gov.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Latest on a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks (all times local):
9:15 p.m.
A federal judge will consider a request to block a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of gestation less than 24 hours after the law took effect.
U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves late Monday evening set a Tuesday morning hearing to consider the request for a temporary restraining order by the state's only abortion clinic.
In papers filed earlier Monday evening, the Jackson Women's Health Organization and a physician who practices there stated that a woman who is 15 weeks or more pregnant is scheduled to have an abortion Tuesday afternoon.
Dr.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The polarizing politics of abortion have burst into the congressional budget debate, overwhelming bipartisan efforts to help millions of consumers who buy their own health insurance policies get relief from soaring premiums.
On Monday, Senate and House Republicans released their latest plan to stabilize the Affordable Care Act's insurance markets. It calls for new federal money to offset the cost of treating the sickest patients and restores insurer subsidies that President Donald Trump terminated last year.
That's clearly a shift from when repealing "Obamacare" was the GOP's demand.

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Embracing the tough penalties favored by global strongmen, President Donald Trump on Monday brandished the death penalty as a fitting punishment for drug traffickers fueling the opioid epidemic.
The scourge has torn through the rural and working-class communities that in large numbers voted for Trump. And the president, though he has come under criticism for being slow to unveil his plan, has seized on harsh sentences as key to stopping the plague.
"Toughness is the thing that they most fear," Trump said.
The president made his announcement in New Hampshire, a state hit hard by opioids and an early marker for the re-election campaign he has already announced.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi's governor has signed the nation's tightest abortion restrictions into law.
Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed House Bill 1510 on Monday afternoon. It becomes law immediately and bans most abortions after 15 weeks' gestation. Bryant has frequently said he wants Mississippi to be the "safest place in America for an unborn child."
The law's only exceptions are if a fetus has health problems making it "incompatible with life" outside of the womb at full term, or if a pregnant woman's life or a "major bodily function" is threatened by pregnancy. Pregnancies resulting from rape and incest aren't exempted.